Music: Bluesman Tinsley Ellis is ‘Winning’

Thursday

Jan 11, 2018 at 4:46 PMJan 11, 2018 at 4:49 PM

By Jay N. Miller/For The Patriot Ledger

We’ve always felt that Tinsley Ellis is the sort of blues artist who should be widely popular with fans of rock ’n’ roll. The Georgia native’s music is bursting with energy, his songwriting deals with contemporary themes with candor, wit and self-deprecating humor, and his strong baritone voice perfectly complements his dynamic, exhilarating guitar style.

Ellis’ latest album is “Winning Hand,” being released today (January 12) on Alligator Records. His tour swings through the region later this month, stopping off at City Winery January 24, and then headlining the Narrows Center for the Arts January 25.

“I like soul and blues, but I was born to play rock,” Ellis laughed, from his Atlanta area home, when we began tossing around labels. “I’d deserve to be called blues-rock, or rockin’ blues. As long as you can get rock in there someplace. I grew up loving people like John Mayall, the Allman Brothers..it wasn’t just all Howlin’ Wolf.”

While he had been a music fan as a youth and began playing guitar, Ellis would go on to earn a degree in history from Emory University. It leads to the logical question, did that interest in history turn this rock fan towards exploring the music’s roots, in the blues?

“There are harder courses in college than history,” Ellis, 60, said with a chuckle. “What does a history degree do anyway? You can’t go on to open a history store. I was definitely a liberal arts type, but even now I like to look at the old stuff, landmarks and so on, we see on the road. I think realizing that blues is the defining ingredient of most of what we know as rock was one part of it. And then most of the really best stuff is 50 years old now – it’s still hard to ever top Muddy Waters or Little Walter. So all that music was around when I was coming of age. I’d guess 99 per cent of people who are blues fans now probably heard it first in rock.”

“I know one of my first important moments was hearing The Rolling Stones do “Little Red Rooster” (a Howlin’ Wolf tune) and I could not figure out how they – I believe it was Brian Jones – got that sound out of a guitar. It was a slide, something first used by people like Skip James. I think we came of age with the whole British Invasion, and most of those bands loved American blues and so we began looking back from there. But the States had folks like Paul Butterfield and his band, Canned Heat, and the Allmans doing the blues too. But, initially, I saw the Beatles on ‘Ed Sullivan’ and begged my parents for a guitar.”

A teen outing was transformative, and got Ellis a lifetime memento.

“I saw B.B. King at age 14, at a teen show,” said Ellis. “He greeted us all in the lobby as we came in! Then during his show he broke a guitar string, and I got it, and still have it. I also saw Howlin Wolf around that time, but I was too scared to try and meet him. All my friends were getting into hard rock, and I was getting more into the blues. Eventually, I got the chance to open shows for some of the alltime greats, my musical heroes, like Buddy Guy, Koko Taylor, Otis Rush, and James Cotton, and it was something I will always treasure.”

By the time Ellis began playing his own brand of blues-rock and touring, Boston became an early oasis, where he formed bonds and won legions of new fans every time through.

“When the whole ‘white boy blues scene’ started happening, Boston and Chicago were two of the epicenters,” Ellis pointed out. “When you think of all those shows they had in that Boston area in those early days, when people like Muddy, B.B., and Wolf were playing, and then think of the musicians at those shows–like Peter Wolf, the J.Geils Band, Duke Robillard, Bob Margolin – who forged their careers out of that inspiration. I saw B.B. and Wolf in about 1971, but those people saw them even earlier, when they were in their prime, and so they got the big jump.”

“We played Sandy’s outside of Boston, and got a good schooling on what hallowed ground that whole area was for blues fans,” said Ellis. “My first Boston gig was with the band The Heartfixers, at The Tam (Brookline) in 1983. I remember when we played Ed Burke’s, he was so tickled to listen to us talk–just up from Georgia, and he thought our accents were hilarious. We played many a show at Harper’s Ferry, where Charlie Abel was a great guy to work for. And we played some shows at Nightstage in Cambridge. But I’ve been booked out of Boston for years – with Ted Kurland and Concerted Efforts, who have a real love of Southern music.”

Ellis is back on Alligator, where he started his solo recording career in 1988. He has been with the premier national blues label, on and off, ever since. He did leave in 2000 to sign with Capricorn Records, and then landed on Telarc before returning to Alligator in 2005. After a couple releases on his own Heartfixers imprint, Ellis is happy to be back on Alligator, and his new record was about a week away from being released when we talked.

“I feel like I’m about nine months pregnant,” Ellis joked. He co-produced the new CD with keyboardist Kevin McKendree, who many fans will know from his work leading Delbert McClinton’s band. (“Kevin’s been my right hand man in the studio since 1997,” said Ellis.) Recorded in Nashville with session musicians, including McKendree, the album includes nine Ellis originals, and a sizzling cover of Leon Russell’s “Dixie Lullaby.”

One intriguing aspect of the new album, for those who buy the CD, is they inner sleeve photo of the guitars involved, and the list of songs includes which guitars Ellis used, from his 1959 Fender Stratocaster to the most recent, his 2000 Les Paul Standard.

“Signing with Alligator in 1988 was the turning point in my career,” said Ellis. “I did sign with the national label later, but then Capricorn folded. I’ve also tried my own label for four albums. But for the past 15 years I’ve either been on Alligator, or affiliated with them – they’d handle my mail order and so on. They’ve been very forgiving. I had started my own label because I had this all-instrumental record, “Get It!” and nobody seemed to want it, so I decided to release it myself. I ended up doing three more that way. Alligator made an offer on this one and I took it – it gives me much better distribution and publicity.”

“The emphasis on guitars is a way of indicating this record is a return to the sound I’m best known for,” Ellis explained. “My biggest stretch of success, in the mid-1990s, was more in that vein. And, since I play all of these guitars on the album, why not show them? You think people are into music genres, but there are really A LOT of guitar fans out there – it’s almost a genre all by itself.”

The music on the new record is thrilling and invigorating in the way that the best rock or blues can be. The opening “Sound of A Broken Man” is as electrifying a blues-rocker as anything Stevie Ray Vaughan ever did, while “Nothing But Fine” suggests Memphis-meets-Bo Diddley grit. But there are some real guitar workouts too, like “Gamblin’ Man,” which features the kind of raw soul Lonnie Mack personified. “I Got Mine” is the kind of strutting kiss-off song, accented by stiletto guitar runs, that Albert King might’ve done. “Autumn Run” is a stately ballad, suggesting maybe Jeff Beck on a Southern soul journey. And “Saving Grace” is both a stunning blues piece and also a nod to Ellis’ other musical models, those first British Invasion bluesmen, like the Yardbirds, Mayall, Robin Trower.

“Saving Grace” would be my intended centerpiece of the album,” said Ellis. “Or, as we used to say in the days of vinyl, a side closer, the kind of longer (8:49) song you use to end a side. That Jeff Beck, Yardbirds Robin Trower influence is there, but don’t forget one of my real loves was Peter Green with the original Fleetwood Mac: when I heard their “Oh Well” it felt like the first time I’d ever heard music I could relate to. “Autumn Run” could also be a side closer, another long, slow soulful one. “Gamblin’ Man” we tried to give that one a real soul shade, almost a Muscle Shoals feeling.”

Ellis assures fans he’ll be reaching back throughout his career for the setlists on this tour with his trio.

“We do a lot from the previous albums, back to 1994’s “Storm Warning” which was my biggest album,” he said. “We also usually do a little mid-set acoustic thing, where I take out my dobro. I don’t travel with all the guitars I played on this album: a lot of my heroes arrived with just one guitar over their shoulder, but so much personality. Muddy or Albert King would never drag around a dozen guitars – that’s a rock world thing, maybe trying to add pizzazz to the show.”

“It’s our first time at the new City Winery in Boston, which is kind of exciting,” Ellis added. “We’ve played all their other locations around the country and they treat you right. The Narrows Center is always fun, and it’s run by super people.”

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